History of Childhood

Childhood: A Theoretical
Perspective
Disciplines:
- developmental psychology
- pedagogy
- sociology
- cultural history


Scholars:
Philippe Aris, Lloyd de Mause, Neil Postman
Philippe Aris: Childhood as a Cultural
Invention

Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1960)

Major claim: childhood, as a concept, was discovered after the
middle ages.

Factors contributing to the emergence of childhood:
- decrease in infant mortality
- changes in the European educational system
- increasing class stratification
- rise of modern family
Aris Controversial Claim
In medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist; this is
not to suggest that children were neglected, forsaken or
despised. The idea of childhood could not be confused with
affection for children: it corresponds to an awareness of the
particular nature of childhood, that particular nature which
distinguishes child from the adult, even the young adult. In
medieval society this awareness was lacking. That is why, as
soon as a child could live without the constant solicitude of his
mother, his nanny or his cradle-rocker, he belonged to adult
society.

Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1960)
The Issue of Age
Historically changing notion of age.
Absolute irrelevance of chronological
age prior to 18
th
century.
No precision in recording dates and
calculating ages.
Instead of chronology, it was ones
appearance, social and financial
status that determined the age.

Children as miniature adults.

The Rise of Childhood

Decline of child mortality.

Increase in the affection and
attention paid to children.

Pictorial evidence: increase in
family portraits, in which
children figure prominently.

Portraits of dead children.
Emergence of a culture of childhood
17
th
century brought about a newfound interest in childrens:







language, mispronunciations
fashion, styles of clothing games and holidays

Disciplinary Schooling
cathedral school - medieval institution preparing for the career of
clerics.
no age gradation in schools.

From 17
th
century onward educators began to divide students into
individual, age-based classes.

age separation as a means of surveillance and control.
increasing use of corporal punishment
view of children as subordinate beings in need of supervision and
discipline.

The Rise of the Nuclear Family
17
th
century:

Change in family's spatial arrangement
Extending zone of private life
Distinct partition between the inside of the household and the
outside of the greater social world
Waning in the practice of apprenticeship and increase in local
day-schools
Parental focus on the proper upbringing of children (upper- and
middle-class)
Emergence of child-centered society.


Child and Philosophies of the
Enlightenment
John Locke (1632- 1704)

view of the child as a tabula rasa or 'blank slate'

parents were viewed as rational tutors who can mold the child
in any way they wish through careful instruction, effective
example, and rewards for good behavior.

rejection of physical punishment
'passive child
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121778)
Children as 'noble savages',
naturally endowed with a sense
of right and wrong and with an
innate plan for orderly, healthy
growth.

Emphasis on child-centered
philosophy in which adults should
be receptive to the childs needs.
The Romantic Child, 1780-1830
The Romantic thinkers promoted and
idealized :

Children's innocence, immediacy, and
uncultivated vision.
Childhood as a state of paradise
Cult of child
Child as a symbol of autonomy,
intimacy with nature, and capacity for
wonder and joy.

The Victorian
Child, 1837-1901

Growing importance of
children's rights and their
protection by state

The education reform

Golden Ageof childhood: an
explosion of books, magazines,
toys, and games aimed at
entertaining children.
Neil Postman: childhood as invention
and cultural construction

From a biological point of view it is inconceivable that any
culture will forget that it needs to reproduce itself. But it is quite
possible for a culture to exist without a social idea of children.
Unlike infancy, childhood is a social artefact, not a biological
category. Our genes contain no clear instructions about who is and
who is not a child, and the laws of survival do not require that a
distinction be made between the world of an adult and the world of a
child. In fact, if we take the word children to mean a special class of
people somewhere between the ages of seven and, say, seventeen,
requiring special forms of nurturing and protection, and believed
to be qualitatively different from adults, then there is ample
evidence that children have existed for less than four hundred years.

N. Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood


N. Postman, The Disappearance of
Childhood (1982)

In 17
th
century the printing press created a sort of knowledge
barrier between those who could read (adults) and those who
couldn't (children).

Accumulation of rich content of secrets (about social and
sexual relations, about money, violence, illness, and death) to
be kept from the young, which maintained adult separateness
from (and control over) children.

The closure of gap between adults and children because of the
"total disclosure medium": television, mass media, internet.
Lloyd deMause: The Evolution of
Childrearing Modes


History of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only
recently began to awaken. The further back in history one
goes, the lower level of child care, and the more likely are
children to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and
sexually abused.


Lloyd Demause, Foundations of Psychohistory. Ch. 1, The
Evolution of Childhood.
Six evolutionary stages of childrearing
modes

1.Infanticidal - small kinship groups, early state to antiquity:
Child sacrifice and infanticide among tribal societies,
Mesoamerica, the Incas; in Assyrian and Canaanite religions.
Phoenicians, Carthaginians.


2. Abandoning - Christian era, early Middle Age:
Longer swaddling fosterage, outside wetnursing, oblation of
children to monasteries and nunneries, and apprenticeship.
3. Ambivalent - beginning with the 12th century:
Early beating, shorter swaddling, mourning for deceased children, a
precursor to empathy.







4. Intrusive - beginning with the late 16th century:
Early toilet training, repression of child's sexuality, end of swaddling
and wet-nursing, empathy now possible, rise of pediatrics.

5. Socializing - beginning late 18th century:
Use of "mental discipline"; teaching children to conform to the
parents goals, socializing them. Rise of compulsory schooling.






6. Helping - beginning mid-20th century:
The helping parent tries to assist the child in reaching its own
goals rather than socializing him or her into adult goals.
Children's rights movement, deschooling.